...ROBERT STRAUSS, Dallas attorney; U.S. Ambassador to Moscow and former chairman of the Democratic National Committee; friend of George Bush and former business partner with James A. Baker III; he and his son, Richard, were involved in a number of failed Texas S&Ls, including Lamar and Gibraltar....

http://www.freewebs.com/ciascams/

BAKER'S FIRM WAS BROUGHT IN TO COVER UP THE CURRENT BACK-DATING SCANDAL AT ACS, AS SEEN HERE:

Whereas many companies mounting an internal probe ask a small committee of independent directors to oversee it, ACS has put its entire seven-member board in charge of the process, assisted by outside legal counsel. So the oversight group includes board Chairman Darwin Deason. Mr. Deason both received some of the options in question and had a role in their timing, the company has said. ACS says its four member audit committee also is monitoring the situation.

Of the six other directors overseeing the probe, two received some of the well-timed options in question. Two others, who are outside, independent directors, were on the compensation committee that approved grants. The remaining two directors, also independent, are men with whom Mr. Deason has had various past ties.

One is J. Livingston Kosberg. He and Mr. Deason go way back. In the late 1980s, the two were entangled in the collapse of a Texas savings-and-loan institution of which Mr. Kosberg was chairman. In winding up the matter, ACS paid a fine and Mr. Kosberg also paid money to federal regulators. Neither was charged with wrongdoing.

In 1998, Mr. Kosberg joined the board of a company that ACS spun off, Precept Business Services Inc. Mr. Deason was the controlling shareholder of Precept and Mr. Kosberg served on its compensation and audit committees.

Precept filed for bankruptcy protection in 2001. In a lawsuit in federal bankruptcy court in Dallas, a bankruptcy trustee criticized Precept directors for allowing Mr. Deason and relatives of his to -- as the trustee put it -- "systematically loot" the company. The suit, singling out Mr. Kosberg and other directors for particular criticism, alleged that the publicly held company had picked up the tab for a range of Deason-family personal expenses, from country-club memberships and luxury cars to cosmetic surgeries, maids, bodyguards, dry cleaning and limousine service.

Both Mr. Deason and Mr. Kosberg settled with the trustee, Mr. Deason for more than $3 million. He didn't return a call seeking comment. An ACS spokesman said that Mr. Deason continues to deny the trustee's looting allegations and that Mr. Deason personally guaranteed more than $2 million in Precept loans and ultimately bore their cost.

Mr. Kosberg, in an interview, said the Precept board functioned well and "there was no looting." As for the S&L collapse, Mr. Kosberg said he didn't remember the details. "We all walked the plank," he said. He said his relationship with Mr. Deason over the years has been "pure business" and sometimes "strained."

Mr. Kosberg said the ACS board would sort out the stock-options issues:

...I know what an independent board is and what a crony board is, and I'm confident that this is an independent board that has the willingness and ability to turn over every rock. He said he is confident in the company's integrity and believes regulators probing for any wrongdoing will "come up empty."...

The seventh director of ACS, Dennis McCuistion, a professional speaker, consultant and television producer, also has had longstanding ties to ACS and Mr. Deason. ACS invested $25,000 in a partnership Mr. McCuistion set up to produce a TV show in the late 1980s, said people familiar with the situation, and Mr. Deason later was on the board of a nonprofit television company started by the director. Mr. McCuistion also consulted for one of Mr. Deason's earlier companies, but the people familiar with the matter said any business involvement between the two men ended 17 years ago.

ACS, after being asked by The Wall Street Journal in January about its past options grants, initially said there were no problems. The board later launched its internal probe, calling on its longtime outside legal counsel, Baker Botts LLP, to lead the effort. ------------------------ http://phx.corporate-ir.net/phoenix. zhtml?c=99443&p=irol-newsArticle&ID =614880&highlight=

ACS Appoints New Board Members and Announces Changes to Corporate Governance Policies

J. Livingston Kosberg has an impressive career as an entrepreneur, having started nearly fifteen businesses and taken four of them public. The Houston, Texas, resident has been involved in a variety of industries including healthcare, finance, and construction. Mr. Kosberg established the National Geriatric Centers in the early 60s. In 1971, with two partners, he formed and took public Gulf Republic Financial, a savings and loan and mortgage holding company of which he was Chairman of the Board. In the late 90s, he formed and became CEO of U.S. Physical Therapy. In 1983, Texas Governor Mark White appointed Kosberg Chairman of the Board of the Texas Board of Human Services. He has also served on the Board of Trustees of both the Texas Cancer Council and the Houston Grand Opera, and is a past president of the Jewish Federation of Greater Houston. --------------- KOSBERG:

By THOMAS C. HAYES, SPECIAL TO THE NEW YORK TIMES Published: January 10, 1991

The Government's plan to sell a prized 6,200-acre real estate development north of Dallas to a Japanese businessman collapsed late Tuesday after he said he could not obtain financing.

... Mr. Kosberg and the Strausses no longer have any involvement at Stonebridge. Gibraltar Savings and a sister institution, First Texas Savings, were declared insolvent by the Government in 1988. The two institutions were later sold, along with three smaller institutions, for $315 million to a group headed by Ronald O. Perelman, the investor and chairman of Revlon Inc.

That newly capitalized institution operates as First Gibraltar, and is the largest savings unit in Texas, with more than $11 billion in assets. Real estate professionals in North Texas said a prospective bidder for the Stonebridge land and facilities faced annual costs of approximately $7 million to maintain the property and its amentities. In addition to those costs and the interest charges on money borrowed to buy Stonebridge, a new owner must construct roads, pay utilities and oversee other development services required by home builders.

Stonebridge has been one of the more popular new residential developments in the Dallas-Fort Worth area since it opened in 1988. The Government said 380 homes, ranging in price from $75,000 to more than $1 million, are occupied. Home builders own another 200 developed lots, as well as enough land to construct another 150 homes. Zoning eventually would allow 27,500 homes and 91 million square feet of retail, commercial, office, research and industrial space.

Yet many local brokers say the current pace of home development at Stonebridge is too slow to provide enough of a return for investors unwilling to stay with the project for 20 years or more. A spokesman for the F.D.I.C. said Government officials familiar with Stonebridge were not available to comment on the project today.

One person familiar with the development raised the prospect that the Government might be forced to sell Stonebridge for far less than $20 million.

Correction: January 14, 1991, Monday

An article in Business Day on Thursday about the Government's inability to sell a real estate development near Dallas misstated the involvement of Robert S. Strauss, the former chairman of the Democratic National Committee, in the Gibraltar Savings Association, a Texas institution that was declared insolvent in 1988. Mr. Strauss owned stock in Gibraltar Savings but did not serve as a director. ----------- ACS and MOHAMMED ATTA

ACS approved the change in Mohammed Atta's visa status in the US from tourist to student:

Statements of Rudi Dekkers of Huffman Aviation, and Tom Blodgett from ACS ...

... Premier was bought up by another Virginia company named CACI International Inc., which used the original contract to hire private interrogators to work in Abu Ghraib prison.

A similar technology contract deal was pulled by Maryland-based Lockheed Martin Corporation, which bought up a small company named Affiliated Computer Services Inc. (ACS) with a Department of Interior technology contract, and then used the contract to employ private interrogators at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. ... ------------- ACS Bribery and Federal Contract Fixing

ROOB CONNECTION: Affiliated Computer Services Inc., one of the companies negotiating with the Family and Social Services Administration for a state welfare eligibility contract worth an estimated $1 billion over 10 years, formerly employed FSSA Secretary Mitch Roob.

DANIELS CONNECTION: ACS has donated $12,500 to Republican Gov. Mitch Daniels' campaign committee over the past three years, including the maximum $5,000 each of the past two years.

WHAT'S NEXT: Daniels has non-FSSA aides reviewing the contract, which could be awarded by the end of the year. -------------- ACS and ES&S

http://www.ecis.com/~alizard/ vote2000.html

A Parable of the US 2000 Election

You can find an interesting analysis of a Missouri election that went sour here. In that analysis you'll find a history of mergers within the election tabulation industry. The interesting part is that apparently, ES&S (which describes itself as privately owned) and Sequoia are effectively the same company, the company that owns both is called Affiliated Computer Services (ACS) of Dallas, TX. They are apparently also a major player in providing technology services to the US court system, USPS, DOT, FCC, the US Senate, the White House, and several other government agencies. I use "apparently" because I haven't had time to sit down and verify through public record the corporate transfers described in the above page.

What does this mean? It's an interesting concentration of power. If one controls the datastream of an organization, one has a great deal of knowledge of what it's really doing. Actually, in this case, it would be interesting to know the relationship between ACS and the GOP and/or the Bush family.

ES&S is the largest election services and equipment vendor in the world. I saw a statement that says they count votes in 60% in US precincts. Apparently, we aren't the only country that may have had problems with ES&S. Column Democracy teeters on the brink in Peru. This discusses the reelection of Fujimori in an election widely believed to be fraudulent. ES&S provided the equipment. Note that Fujimori is believed to be friendly to US corporate interests. -------------- http://www.buzzflash.com/mailbag /2002/03/mailbag031802.html

Gerretson as Director, National Intelligence and Information Operations

San Antonio, Texas -- July 7, 2004, dNovus RDI is pleased to announce the hiring of Jim Gerretson as the dNovus Director of National Intelligence and Information Operations. Mr. Gerretson was previously Director of Information Assurance (IA) at Lockheed Martin, with customers in the Federal, State, Local, HealthCare and Commercial sectors.

Mr. Gerretson has over 28 years experience in the areas of IA, Network and Computer Security, Network Engineering, Systems Engineering and Program Management. As Director of IA for Lockheed- Martin, (formerly Affiliated Computer Services Defense, Inc.) he led a team of 120 in providing IA services including penetration testing, security consulting and networking design, cyber-forensics, security products evaluation, security policy evaluation and creation, and security training for the NSA, DoD, State, and commercial organizations. He was a Cryptologic Technician in the US Navy and held technical positions with Ford Aerospace, JG Vandyke & Associates, and Computer Sciences Corporation.

Mr. Gerretson has testified before committees of the U.S. Congress as an expert witness on Information Security matters, and has been a featured speaker at national and international conferences, including the Information Warfare Conference in London.